I have a feeling things like this don’t happen very often.

The Wildlife Conservation Society’s gorilla experts say that they’ve found a group of previously undiscovered western lowland gorillas in the Republic of Congo. What makes this news so exciting is that these gorillas are critically endangered. How big is a group do you ask? Well in this case, the group makes up 125,000 gorillas, which is almost double what the worldwide population was thought to be.

It doesn’t get much more awesome than that..

However, there is of course some bad news to report with the excitement.

The reason the gorillas have been able to thrive in the Congo up until this point is that not many humans visit the areas:

And since there aren’t any logging operations in the heart of these northern forests, Ruggiero said, roads are all but nonexistent. That, in turn, has led to low levels of poaching or subsistence hunting. Basically, there aren’t many humans here, Ruggiero said.

But that’s beginning to change. In recent years, the Republic of Congo has begun to sell the right to log the forests, Ruggiero said. In his view, the pressure to keep selling logging rights is at an all-time high and it’s getting higher.

“Where there are natural resources in Africa, the rush to exploit them is at a pace that no one ever dreamt possible,” Ruggiero said. [NPR]

Hopefully now that we know the gorillas are there, something can be done to make sure they remain.

takepart to read and listen to the entire story @ NPR and takepart again to learn how you can get involved with the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Read on:

• Trove of Endangered Gorillas Found in Africa
• Gorilla discovery doubles population estimates
• World’s most endangered gorilla fights back

*photo by bbdoyle